Kettle's Yard revisited

Cornelia Parker drew on the windows with chalk.

Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, one of my favourite places,

has reopened after two years with new galleries, shop and café.

The experience once inside is much the same (and it's still free)

but instead of being able to just turn up and ring at the door

you have to pre-arrange a slot and wait to be collected 

and taken through to the house at ten minute intervals 

which somehow spoils the informality of the original arrangement.

Antony Gormley was hanging around.

He looked a little dejected in one corner of the gallery.
Perhaps he missed the old Kettle's Yard too.

Here's my homage.

Reflections on mirrors

There is one kind mirror in my house.

It's in the bathroom

and I got it out of a skip when I was 19

and furnishing digs in Bristol with a mattress on the floor 

and bookshelves made from planks and house bricks.

That means I have been looking in it for 43 years.

I think that might be why it is kind.

I have retained a vestigial memory of how I looked then

and it reflects that image just faintly.

It may help that it is not well lit

and I do not peer too closely.

Here I am in its first bathroom with a Bizzy Lizzy

and a reluctance even then to commit my face to close scrutiny.

A strange thing has just happened.

I looked up 'vestigial memory,' to see if it was a thing,

and came immediately upon the work of an artist

who was at college with me when I took up skip surfing.

Even more strangely he is referencing Anna Freud

who I also met aged 19 and wrote about here in 2010.

The cruellest mirrors are in department store changing rooms.

You are mercilessly exposed to every possible angle

and lit from above.

Nobody should ever be lit from above.

The cruellest one of all was in the basement of Miss Selfridge.

(I was not there willingly.)

Dazed and confused by the shattering music, the flashing lights,

sudden pools of darkness and milling shoppers,

I veered clumsily between racks of clothes

looking for the exit.

A similarly disorientated woman made her way towards me.

There was an impasse. She wasn't going to step aside.

Wretched woman I thought, as I smacked into a mirrored pillar.

My Teenage Diary

Prompted by Rebecca's post here

and this radio 4 programme

I have dug out a picture of me at 15

and extracted a few nuggets from the diary of that year.
It was a very small diary with not much room for heartfelt outpourings
but it is the music that ignites the memory.

I will spare you the meticulous record of homework, hair washes

and barfs (that's baths not the American thing).

Went over to Maxine's watched last Forsythe Saga. Very sad.

 Had a barf. Washed my hair.

(oops sorry)

Fantastic NME Wembley concert.

 Amen Corner, Johnny Nash, Desmond Dekker, Love Affair, Lulu, Marmalade, 

Hank Marvin, Robin and Maurice Gibb,  Move, Cliff Richard, Peter Sarstedt, 
Scaffold, Steppenwolf, Tremeloes, Clodagh Rodgers, Tony Blackburn.

Sold Monkees LP for 12/6 bought Cat Stevens LP for 7/6. Good bargain.
(That was a significant transition as well as transaction.)

Went to Carnaby Street.

Maths and geography exams diabolicale.(sic)

Killed myself in rounders tournament.

Attempted Bronze survival and failed.

Learnt to play Moonlight Sonata.
(Slow movement only like E.F Benson's Lucia.)

Moon Landing 9.18

3.56 Man on moon.

Took off from moon 6.54

Didn't go to school.

Amen Corner splitting 

(This was tragic news.)

Went to see Forty Years On. Alan Bennett, John Gielgud. 

V.G but took ages to get there.

Got called Twiggy in Oxford Street.

Emma and I got Abbey Road for 29/11.



Heard I am going on Caribbean cruise next year.
(This was on the educational cruise ship the S.S Nevasa.)

Mummy got lovely dress material for my maxi.

Entered Biba competition.

Music lesson diabolical.

He is an immature scrap who enjoys a bit of fun on Saturday nights.

He can find someone else to drag around & I'm glad it won't be me.

 I don't care if I never see that nit again. 

And I probably won't.

He's a no good drip.

Saw The Graduate and have grown up a little.

Hats off

I'm not really a hat person,

but I used to like the idea of a new hat for spring

and once bought a yellow felt hat 

with a sprig of fabric flowers pinned to its brim.

I miss that hat.

This one is alright for gardening but rather reminds me

of my school Panama.

I probably won't be wearing a hat to the wedding,

they mostly make me look like a mushroom,

but I certainly won't be wearing a fascinator instead.

If they are not good enough for the Royal Enclosure at Ascot

then they are not good enough for me.

Caught by the light too*

The silhouette.

It's the only way to go now.

See here.

Semi-detached

from the blog in summer.

So, a round up of the last few days,

filled as they have been with family and friends, 

reunions and partings,

some art and some car parts,

backgammon and backwaters,

all of them accompanied by food and flowers.

The art was the Miro exhibition at Tate Modern,

in which I was, as usual, more entertained by my companions

and the other exhibition visitors, than the paintings,

and the car part was this hard to replace

rear windscreen blade for our sixteen year old car

lately given a stay of execution

with a new battery and a passed MOT.

Oh and I had a haircut.

I look like a rather cross owl.

The Linen Cupboard

Today the linen cupboard had to be dismantled

and moved out of the room with the Black Mould.

And once it was in pieces it was obvious that

the disgorged contents would have to be sorted.

Four drawers and three shelves worth

of sheets (single and double), duvet covers, pillow cases,

vintage curtains, lace panels, embroidered tablecloths,

napkins, quilts, baby blankets, shawls, towels,

counterpanes, eiderdowns, picnic cloths, tray cloths...

four drawers and three shelves worth of memories

stretching back past first big bed, to cot, to Moses basket,

to first flat, to first house, to student digs,

to childhood home, to aunty's room, to grandparents' home

and then suddenly pre-me, into real history.

It was 1941, and a baby, a sister I was never to meet, 

born that Christmas Eve,

 was to be christened.

A christening robe had to be made, in wartime,

from whatever was available.

I think it might even have been

a lace curtain,

lined with silky fabric

perhaps from one of my mother's slips,

and decorated with a length of brittle gold ribbon.

It survived the Blitz.
I am astonished that it has survived my casual custodianship.
I will buy some acid-free tissue paper
and re-store it with the care that it deserves.

Morning ablutions

Sunrise 04:43.